Posted on: 1 October 2010

Digital Book :
Chandah Sutra of Pingala Acharya
With the Commentary of Halayudha in Sanskrit
Edited by Pandita Visvanatha Sastri
Printed at the Ganesha Press, Calcutta - 1874

Pingala (पिङ्गल piṅgalá) is the traditional name of the author of the Chandaḥśāstra (also Chandaḥsūtra), the earliest known Sanskrit treatise on prosody.Nothing is known about Pingala himself. In Indian literary tradition, he is variously identified either as the younger brother of Panini (4th century BCE), or as Patanjali, the author of the Mahabhashya (2nd century BCE).The chandaḥśāstra is a work of eight chapters in the late Sutra style, not fully comprehensible without a commentary. It has been dated to either the final centuries BCE or the early centuries CE, at the transition between Vedic meter and the classical meter of the Sanskrit epics. This would place it close to the beginning of the Common Era, likely post-dating Mauryan times. The 10th century mathematician Halayudha wrote a commentary on the chandaḥśāstra and expanded it.

The Chandaḥśāstra presents the first known description of a binary numeral system in connection with the systematic enumeration of meters with fixed patterns of short and long syllables.[4] The discussion of the combinatorics of meter corresponds to the binomial theorem. Halayudha's commentary includes a presentation of the Pascal's triangle (called meruprastāra). Pingala's work also contains the basic ideas of Fibonacci number (called mātrāmeru ).[5]Use of zero is sometimes mistakenly ascribed to Pingala due to his discussion of binary numbers, usually represented using 0 and 1 in modern discussion, while Pingala used short and long syllables. As Pingala's system ranks binary patterns starting at one (four short syllables—binary "0000"—is the first pattern), the nth pattern corresponds to the binary representation of n-1, written backwards. Positional use of zero dates from later centuries and would have been known to Halayudha but not to Pingala.

- Wikipedia


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Read Book Online : http://www.archive.org/stream/chandahsutram00pinguoft#page/n5/mode/2up

Download pdf Book : http://ia311027.us.archive.org/2/items/chandahsutram00pinguoft/chandahsutram00pinguoft.pdf

The zero and one of the binary system are not numbers in themselves as commonly believed. Those symbols represent two states or two places. The old typeset is going to make this book a difficult read and in any case it is going to take months if not years to read it. With a text reader it should be possible to convert the typeset to a more moder version with which we are more comfortable. Or a program should render it audio.

Thanks for putting up this rather ancient book. I have downloaded it in .PDF form. Now I think this is not a rare book ... in that it is available from Chowkhamba? Well, lemme just check it up right now.Yeah, I have one published by Ramlal Kapur and Trust, Bahalgarh, Sonepat Haryana. This book has been edited by Dr.Vijayapal VidyavAridhi. He has consulted several earlier works including Yadavaprakasha's[Bhagawan Ramanujacharya's earlier vidyaguru] Bhavaprakasha, and several others. The present work by RBSI is a classic work edited by Vishwanatha Shastri. He says in the preface that he has consulted chiefly Halayudha vR^itti- the earliest extant vR^itti. A vR^itti is a minimal explanation constructed out of the words available in the sUtra itself, supplying only those words as are required to complete the sentence to make complete sense. sUtra translates loosely to formula. But as per definition of sUtra - a collection of the least no of letters so as to just cross the level of doubt (i.e. with a possibility of misinterpretation) such that the text contains essentials all round, bringing out the summary in the beginning. [this is a translation of the definitional shloka] Thank you RBSI for this book. Here is another treasure I can share with our Veda Guru. Earlier, I told him of the Rmayana with three commentaries.

@Shekhar: The book is about meter and letter counts in poetic expression in Sanskrit. Pingalacharya the original author of the the text, and has dealt with Vedic and Classical Sanskrit "Chhandas" (= meter). The laghu-guru mAtras(short-long vowelic counts) would tempt us western educated people to think of the binary system. In fact, I have tried to work out the decimal equivalents of the "gaNas" of the Chhandas-determination system. On second thoughts I would rather use the letter equivalents to encode usable numbers from our day-to-day life.

In the preface of this book is a story told of how Pingala, who is known as Pingala Naga in the prAkR^ita literature- he has under that name written about prAkR^ita Chhandas also- had outwitted GaruDa(the celestial Eagle -the mount of ViShNu. Once garuDa happened to see pingalanAga and wanted to make a meal out of him. But the smart pi~NgalanAga made this pact with him. " Just watch my expertise in metrics of poetry. I shall never repeat even one permutation that I have used earlier. You shall not eat me so long as I don't repeat even one." So saying he started writing out the permutations of various chhandas on the earth(mud-sand mixture: the ancient way of practicing writing). As he filled the earth with these permutations progressively,he reached the sea shore and the last Chhandas he described was the bhuja~ngaprayAtaM. With this he entered the waters of the sea and saved himself! It is interesting to note that the literal meaning of the word bhuja~Nga prayAtam is : The Grand Exit of the Snake. It also happens to be the meter in which prayers to rid one of Sarpa Dosha are written. For example Subrahmanya Bhuja~Nga composed by Sh. Adi Shankaracharya. When read in style this particular meter gives one the feeling of a snake's zig-zag crawling motion!

I understand, the meters are very useful in writing poetry and songs in Marathi. I suppose those can be applied to other languages too.

MSS : Thanks for your most engaging comments. You should take up teaching...it seems to come naturally for you.

@Shekhar: Yeah, there is nothing that stops one from using the Sanskrit Chhandas rules in other languages too. As far as I know Sanskrit vR^ttas like shArdUlavikrIDitam, vasantatilaka, bhujangaprayAtam, sragdhara etc., are applied in Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi languages. I am sure, since all our languages have their Sanskrit base hence, the same vR^ittas do find extensive use in addition to the native vR^ittas!

@RBSI: I do teach and was doing so on the side until very recently. Mostly it was Engineering subjects and Math, Physics that I taught. I have taught Sanskrit and shall teach in future to aspirants wanting to learn Sanskrit. Among the other languages I have taught English Hindi and Telugu to students on demand. For my colleagues kids I do write Hindi essays. You might have guessed by now that I love languages and Sanskrit in particular.

Yes, all the above Vrttas have been extensively used in Marathi as well in poetry till a few decades back, to be replaced by Chhandas and free forms later on. I still remember from my school days that we learnt the Vrttas through couplets in the same Vrtta describing its characteristics e.g. Mandakranta.. Vrtta je manda chaale (Vrtta which ambles at a gentle pace) etc. which was fun.

Right, I forgot to mention mandAkrAntA. That is nice Deepak. But with the coming of free forms we almost have no one to write thise kinds of poetry now, except may be in Sanskrit. But a s Sanskrit gets popular, people might attempt writing blank verse...

Muktachhanda or chhandamukta; which is right? Poetry is written in Muktachhanda (not bound in meter yet poetic) too. The word chhanda in Marathi also implies a hobby or even vyasan (addiction)